Yankees fan socked with Bronx cheer

Sid McKeen Wry & Ginger

Published Sunday January 6, 2013 at 6:00 am

My friend Mike is a prince of a guy in almost every respect, and a perfect gentleman. He doesn’t smoke or drink. I’ve never heard him swear. He’s kind to little kids, loyal to his friends and just nice to be around.

I have no doubt that his ticket through the Pearly Gates has long since been punched. But he also has one serious character flaw: He’s a big fan of the New York Yankees. Even worse, he likes to rub it in when they come out ahead of my team, the Boston Red Sox, which they have some history of doing.

Both of us are native New Englanders, but Mike happened to grow up in Western Connecticut, a breeding ground for baseball turncoats. In Northern Maine, where I spent my formative years, he’d be guilty of treason against the homeland. We first met a decade ago in Florida, where sports allegiances are all over the map because almost anybody you run into came from somewhere else. We started swapping email messages, and I wish I’d saved them all to give you some of the flavor of our exchanges.

Suffice it to say that Mike has this uncanny knack for twisting everything into a whack at the Red Sox. A few seasons back, when Johnny Damon bailed out of Boston and joined New York, Mike pretended he’d never heard of the guy. “Who’s this Damon?” he wanted to know. Last spring when the Sox were languishing in the division cellar and the Yanks were on top, he sarcastically messaged me that the sports page in his newspaper appeared to be printing the standings upside down.

Only a few weeks ago, in response to my comment in this column that crossword puzzles are getting harder because of new fad words, he asked me slyly about the word “threepeat,” meaning winning three championships in a row. “But, of course,” he suggested, “a Red Sox fan wouldn’t know what threepeat means, let alone repeat.”

See what I mean? The guy throws me all kinds of stuff — wicked curves, knuckleballs, the works. But most of all a nasty bean ball, aimed straight at the noggin.

For my part, I’ve been a devout anti-Yankee since I first started following the national pastime in the early 1940s. I don’t own one of those T-shirts that say, “Anyone But the Yankees,” but I envy those who do and embrace them as comrades-in-arms.

I’ve always wanted to write a book titled “The Devil Wears Pinstripes.” To me, the boys from the Big Apple over the years have largely been an overpaid, overrated crop of wimpy upperdogs assembled by owners committed to outbidding everybody for their services as long as the help is willing to shave once a day.

This year, the New Yorkers may be pulling in their horns a bit in the moneybags department, but it’s still early. Back in 2004, my favorite year of the millennium, we had October house guests from New York. The Bronx Bombers, you may recall, were mercilessly whaling the Boys from Beantown in the playoffs that fall and led in wins the day they left 3-0, to the grins and outright guffaws of the male half of the couple. Almost the minute they left, the Red Sox proceeded to take the series 4 games to 3, to the profound delight of all Yankee-haters.

I didn’t see the man again for several years. When I did, I asked him in feigned innocence, “How did that thing ever turn out anyway?” He got it. Let that be a lesson, Mike. The New Year for me starts in April, not January, and I have only three words for you and your merry little band of pampered mercenaries: Bring. It. On.